Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Some tanning wear and marking due to age. Year 1928. Hardcover. Spanish. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> It consists of three hundred and ninety-six leaves on both sides of which the poems have been written in a fine hand in the style called “Nastaliq.” The paper is fairly thick of a mellow ivory tone. It was the custom to prepare the paper for the brush by polishing it with an egg-shaped crystal. It is smooth and delightful to the touch. Each page is decorated on the broad margins with designs painted in two tones of gold one paler than the other and slightly greenish. These designs contain no human figures but all kinds of animals and birds among foliage and flowers. Similar motives are repeated but no two pages are exactly alike. Occasionally the decoration takes the form of a symmetrical pattern of floral ornament and birds; but usually it is a free design. Sometimes it is a page of wild life in happiness among slender cypresses or – blossoming trees are birds and beasts foxes hares deer bears monkeys resting or at play. But generally the wild animals are fighting or preying on each other; lions tigers or leopards leap upon antelopes or oxen: hawks bear down herons from the air. Now and then the artists painted hoofs and horns in silver; this has now gone black. It is the same with the springs and rivulets which occasionally flow among the flowers and shrubs. It is remarkable to what an extent fabulous creatures are mixed among the real animals. These seem to be all borrowed from Chinese art. There are dragons. (MP)